Is Athletic Brewing Woke?

Company Overview

Athletic Brewing Company is a Connecticut-based maker of non-alcoholic craft beer, founded in 2017 by former hedge-fund trader Bill Shufelt and brewmaster John Walker and headquartered in Milford, Connecticut. The company pioneered a fermentation method that keeps its beers below 0.5% ABV without removing alcohol after brewing, and it built its brand around fitness, wellness, and an active outdoor lifestyle. From roughly $2.5 million in sales in 2019, Athletic has grown into the dominant force in its category: it commands the majority of U.S. non-alcoholic craft beer sales, reportedly outselling the next hundred NA craft brands combined, and by early 2024 it had become the top-selling non-alcoholic beer brand in American grocery stores, passing Heineken and Budweiser.

The company operates brewing facilities in Milford and San Diego, produced nearly 400,000 barrels in 2024, and has expanded its footprint with a second San Diego acquisition and a "Daypack" hop-infused sparkling water line. Athletic remains privately held; Keurig Dr Pepper took a $50 million minority stake in 2022. For values-minded shoppers, the relevant point is that Athletic is not a fringe player but the clear market leader in a fast-growing beverage category, and it has chosen to wear its social and environmental commitments openly rather than keep them quiet.

ESG & Sustainability

Athletic Brewing is a Certified B Corporation, a designation it earned in April 2022 and which requires meeting third-party standards for social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. The company publishes an annual Impact Report and centers much of its brand identity on environmental stewardship. Its flagship giving vehicle, the "Two For The Trails" program, pledges up to $2 million annually toward protecting and restoring outdoor spaces, funding trail maintenance and conservation partners across the country.

The sustainability messaging is ongoing and current, not historical. In spring 2025, Athletic launched an Earth Month campaign built around a limited-edition Two For The Trails IPA brewed with regeneratively farmed barley and marketed on a reduced carbon footprint. The company also organizes employee volunteer days for trail repair and conservation work. Conservative consumers who simply want a good non-alcoholic beer may have no quarrel with trail cleanup and land conservation, which enjoy broad cross-partisan support. The caution here is less about the environmental work itself and more about the B Corp and ESG framework it sits inside, which ties the brand to a broader stakeholder-capitalism model that some values-based shoppers prefer to avoid.

DEI Programs

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are woven explicitly into Athletic's stated core values. The company's published values page lists "inclusion" as a named pillar, pledging to "welcome diverse perspectives" and build "a respectful and encompassing community inside and outside of our walls." Athletic backs that language with programming, most visibly through its IMPACT Brew Series, a rotating set of cause-tied limited releases that donate proceeds to affiliated nonprofits. The series honors Black History Month with a beer called "Soul Sour," Women's History Month with "Trailblazer," Pride Month with "Rainbow Wall," and Veterans Day with "Ready Front."

Critically for anyone tracking the 2024-2026 corporate DEI retreat, Athletic has not rolled these programs back. As many larger corporations quietly retired diversity initiatives under public and legal pressure, Athletic continued running its IMPACT lineup: "Trailblazer" returned for Women's History Month and "Soul Sour" for Black History Month in the most recent cycles, and the series is still presented as an ongoing, central part of the brand. That consistency is the single most important fact for scoring this company: it signals that Athletic's progressive-leaning commitments are durable convictions rather than trend-chasing. It is worth noting that the "Ready Front" veterans release, which donates to groups like Team Red White & Blue, Team Rubicon, and Irreverent Warriors, sits in the same series and reflects causes with wide appeal across the political spectrum.

LGBTQ+ Advocacy

Athletic's most overt point of friction for socially conservative consumers is its Pride Month participation. Each June the company releases "Rainbow Wall," a Blood Orange IPA originally brewed in collaboration with LGBTQ climber Alex Johnson and marketed as its "annual Pride Month brew." Athletic states that proceeds from Rainbow Wall are donated to Athlete Ally and the OUT Foundation, two nonprofits focused on LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The release has run annually since 2021 and remains an active, recurring part of the IMPACT Brew Series rather than a one-off.

This is a deliberate, sustained advocacy position, and shoppers who object to corporate Pride campaigns should factor it in. At the same time, the scale and tone matter for a fair assessment. Athletic markets Rainbow Wall to its existing outdoor-and-athletics audience and has not staged the kind of high-profile influencer partnership that triggered the Bud Light backlash; it has largely avoided becoming a national boycott target. Athletic is also a privately held company and does not carry a Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index score, so its LGBTQ advocacy shows up in product and donation choices rather than in an HRC rating. The advocacy is real and ongoing, but it is channeled through a seasonal charitable beer rather than aggressive across-the-board activism.

Political Activity

On direct political engagement, Athletic Brewing is comparatively quiet. As a private company, it does not appear in OpenSecrets with a meaningful federal contribution or lobbying profile, and there is no public record of significant partisan giving or of executives functioning as political spokespeople. The company's leadership has not made a habit of wading into hot-button electoral fights, and Athletic is not a signatory of high-profile activist coalitions such as CEO Action. In practice, its "activism" is expressed almost entirely through cause marketing and charitable donations tied to its beer releases rather than through campaign checks or political lobbying. For conservative shoppers, this is a mitigating factor: the concerns raised by Athletic's programming are about corporate values messaging, not about the company bankrolling political campaigns or candidates.

Consumer Impact

Athletic Brewing lands squarely in the middle of the scale, and its 45 rating reflects a genuinely mixed picture. On one side, the company runs an active, well-funded DEI and Pride agenda that it has notably declined to walk back during the recent corporate pullback, including an annual Pride beer benefiting LGBTQ nonprofits and Black History and Women's History Month releases. It is a Certified B Corp fully bought into the ESG framework. For shoppers who want their dollars to stay out of progressive social campaigns, those are real reasons for pause.

On the other side, Athletic is not a Bud Light-style flashpoint. Its causes lean progressive but arrive through low-key charitable releases rather than confrontational marketing, it balances Pride and Black History Month beers with a genuinely popular veterans release, and it steers clear of partisan political giving. The result is a brand that leans left of center on culture but does so in a measured way. Values-driven conservative consumers should go in with eyes open: your purchase modestly supports a company that champions DEI and Pride causes. Whether that is disqualifying or merely something to note will depend on how strictly you apply your standards, which is exactly why Athletic sits in the mid-range rather than at either extreme.